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Asia Trip Report- Part 2 Hong Kong

After Singapore we flew to Hong Kong. Luckily we had a weekend to spend there so I got to see more sights than I did in Singapore. While business travel can take you to some cool cities, the problem is you spend most of your time in office buildings and hotels and only see sights from a distance out of a cab window. The trip was pretty smooth except for the cab driver taking us to the wrong place on the way from the airport to the hotel. He were on some very sketchy looking side streets and I was starting to get concerned we were going to get robbed or something. Then he turned a corner and brought us in front of a nice hotel. The problem was it wasn’t the right hotel. The cab driver didn’t speak English and we didn’t speak Chinese so we had a hard time convincing him it wasn’t the right place. Fortunately a lady form the hotel came out and she did speak English so she was able to translate and tell the driver where we needed to go. Of course he then proceeded to argue with her and it looked like we were going to have to get and there and pick up another cab. She eventually convinced him and we made it to our hotel. We dropped our stuff at the hotel and headed out.

My family wanted to me to bring some stuff back, so we started out at Stanley Market to do some shopping and then grabbed dinner.

There was a nice little beach area next to the market.

The person I was travelling with had a friend from grad school who lives in Hong Kong. It was cool to have a local to help show us around. She took us to a restaurant for hot pot. I had never heard of that before but it ended up being delicious. Its kind of like fondue but with meat and shrimp and noodles and other stuff. No one there spoke English and the menu was all in Chinese and didn’t have pictures, so there was no way we could have eaten there with a local.

The next day we took a huge cable car to the giant Buddha. The sign said the it was a 60 minute wait but we decided to go for it anyway. They were a little bit off on their timing and it ended up taking 2 1/2 hours Needless to say I was pretty unhappy. They even did the Disney style thing with the line where it looks like you’re almost there and then you turn a corner and there is another massive line. Some of the signs were pretty funny though. No livestock permitted on the cable car…..

The cable car ride was about 30 minutes, and it had some absolutely huge spans between the supports.

It was worth the wait though, the Buddha was pretty amazing:

Every religion is required to have a donation box. But I think if they really wanted apples they would have made the slot bigger.

Hong Kong at night. We checked out the waterfront and had an awesome steak dinner at Morton’s.

Had to check out the Walk of Fame and the Bruce Lee statue!

Then went to the night market to buy more stuff for my kids. Also had to pick up a Mao/Obama shirt for my Dad to tilt him a little.

Did a little bar hopping as well:

Obviously I didn’t take pictures of the business meetings, but they went well and I learned a lot. I have one more part for this trip report, which will be Shanghai.

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